Brussels attacks: Airport bomber's suicide note to his mother

One of two brothers who blew themselves up in the Brussels attacks left an audio suicide note claiming he was carrying out the bombing in preference to being caught and sent to jail.

The recorded declaration of Ibrahim El Bakraoui - addressed to his mother - was found on an audio file on his laptop. He had dumped the computer in a dustbin on Rue Max Rose, a street in the Schaerbeek neighbourhood of Brussels where the terrorists had set up a bomb making factory.

The emergence of the suicide note was the latest dramatic revelation 24 hours after the attacks on Brussels which left at least 31 dead and 270 wounded.

"I am always on the move, I don’t know what to do, I’m being hunted everywhere and am no longer safe. If I go on like this [I] will end up in a prison cell next to him.”

Ibrahim El Bakraoui

Ibrahim El Bakraoui, 29, was seen in the centre of a CCTV image wheeling his suitcase packed with deadly explosives through the departures hall of Brussels Airport in the minutes before the attack.

It was disclosed yesterday that his brother Khalid El Bakraoui, 27, was the suicide bomber who detonated his explosives on the second carriage of a train at Maalbeek metro station, a little over an hour after the airport bombs.

It left prosecutors unsure of the identities of two of the men in the CCTV footage. It was reported last night that the man on the left, also dressed in black and like El Bakraoui wearing a single black glove, possibly to hide the detonator, was Najim Laachraoui. He was the terror cell’s bombmaker and is now said to have died in the airport explosion.

The identity of the man on the right, wearing a hat and white coat, is not known.

In a press conference yesterday, Frédéric Van Leeuw, the Belgian federal prosecutor, said Ibrahim El Bakraoui had left a note on his laptop. It was later claimed it was contained in an audio file. Mr van Leeuw said: “In a dustbin in the same street, detectives found a laptop containing the will of Ibrahim El Bakraoui, which said: ‘I am always on the move, I don’t know what to do, I’m being hunted everywhere and am no longer safe. If I go on like this [I] will end up in a prison cell next to him.”

It is unclear whether the word “him” was a reference to Salah Abdeslam, the suspected Paris bomber who was arrested last week and who is “cooperating” with interrogators.

Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a Belgian jihad expert, said Abdeslam’s arrest accelerated the attacks. “This was not revenge for the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, but about bringing forward existing plans for fear that he would speak under pressure and so would expose them and their plans,” he said.

The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed yesterday that Ibrahim El Bakraoui had been arrested in June last year in southern Turkey and then sent back to Europe. Turkey insisted it had warned Belgium that El Bakraoui “was a foreign fighter” but that those warnings had been ignored. It was claimed he was sent from Turkey to the Netherlands rather than to Belgium and that El Bakraoui demanded he be deported there rather than his home country.

The apartment complex which was raided by police on Tuesday night after twin bomb attacks in BrusselsCredit:
AP

Khalid was reportedly sentenced to five years probation in 2012 for car jackings. He was found to have Kalashnikovs in his possession when arrested.

It suggests the brothers may have been radicalised at a later date, possibly in jail. Prosecutors also revealed that the first explosion in the airport was detonated at aisle 11 in the departure hall at “precisely 7.58am and 28 seconds” and that nine seconds later “at 7.58am and 37 seconds, a second explosion went off at aisle two”.

It is thought passengers fleeing the first smaller bomb, ran straight towards the second, placed near a Starbucks cafe and near the terminal exit.

Mr Van Leeuw revealed a third bomb, in the possession of the man in the white coat, had failed to detonate. “His bag contained the biggest explosive charge,” said the prosecutor. “Shortly before the arrival of anti-bomb disposal experts, this bag exploded due to the major instability of the explosives.”

The trio had arrived at the airport in Zaventem, a suburb about seven miles from Brussels city centre. The taxi driver had picked the men up from an apartment in Rue Max Roos in Schaerbeek, the Brussels neighbourhood where Laachraoui lived. Following the bombings, the taxi driver then came forward tipping police off to the whereabouts of the flat raided on Wednesday night.

The driver had been suspicious because the men had refused to let him handle their baggage and had complained that his car was too small. Two bags were left behind in the apartment as a consequence, according to reports.

The prosecutor said yesterday that in the Schaerbeek apartment, police had found “15kg of TAT explosives, 150 litres of acetone, 30 litres of oxygenated water, detonators, a suitcase full of nails and screws and bomb making equipment including glass vials, plastic different tools and ventilators”.

The material left behind would be sufficient for three suicide bombs of the type used in the 7/7 attacks on London in 2005.

It was reported yesterday that the mystery man in the white coat and hat had left the airport, possibly in a high performance Audi S4 in a car linked to a Belgium citizen of Turkish origin who has been under surveillance by the anti-terrorist police and who had recently travelled to Saudi Arabia with four other men.

There were further claims last night that the terrorists had targeted Americans. Devin Nune, chairman of the US House Intelligence Committee, said after briefings with US intelligence officials that the first blast at Brussels Airport was close to counters for United Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Airlines - all US carriers. The explosion on the metro was close to the US embassy.